The right way to check references

Checking the references of prospective employees is often left until late in the recruitment process, if it’s done at all. Checking references is a great tool for deciding between equally qualified candidates, or for weeding out applicants who won’t be suited to your organisation’s culture. It can be very hard to tell what someone is like to work with on a day-to-day basis from a formal interview.

It’s also increasingly important to check reference as CVs can be incomplete or even contain misrepresentations. There are currently a lot of jobseekers on the market, and the extreme pressure of applying for a limited number of jobs can lead some candidates to knowingly exaggerate their credentials and experience in an effort to stand out above their competition.

In a recent survey by ELAS, one in three managers have admitted to lying or exaggerating about their qualifications in the past. With many charity fraud cases in the headlines recently (the NFA estimates that charities lose 1.7% of their annual income to fraud), it’s even more important for non-profit organisations to protect themselves and vet potential employees prior to offering them a job.

In the case of senior employees, if there is an inconsistency or misrepresentation on a CV and the truth comes out, it can be potentially extremely embarrassing for the organisation involved and potentially damage relations with their donors. Take the recent scandal that ensued when Yahoo’s then-Chief Executive Scott Thompson was found to have an "inadvertent error" on his CV.

When is the best time to conduct checks?

The best time to check references generally varies depending on the responsibility of the role in question and the amount of time spent recruiting.  You don’t want to get to the end of a lengthy recruitment process, only to find out your chosen candidate’s references don’t stack up. However, obtaining references can be a time-consuming process and too difficult to do for every candidate in the running.

Many employers leave reference checks until after the first-stage interviews, when they have narrowed down the pool of potential employees. A previous employer’s opinion can be extremely useful at this stage to decide between candidates with similar experience or qualifications. Another approach is to conduct a two-stage reference checking process, with written requests to verify basic details made early on, followed by detailed telephone conversations later with previous line managers of the favourite candidates.

You will probably have to wait until after a conditional offer is made to the candidate to contact their current employer.

What’s the best way to do it?

There are essentially two ways in which you can get references – in writing or over the telephone. While a written reference may be sufficient for a junior role, other roles are likely to require a phone conversation to get anything but the most basic information.

Some organisations have a policy of not giving references, and will only confirm basic employment details, while others try to shunt you off to the HR department. However, be persistent and try to speak to a line manager, as they will give you the most useful information. Contact the referees in advance (or ask the candidate to do so) and book in a specific time for your conversation.

Who should you talk to?

As mentioned above, a previous line manager of the candidate’s is best, even if they have since left the organisation, as they will have direct experience of managing the candidate on a day-to-day basis. If the candidate has lost contact with their previous line manager, suggest they use LinkedIn to track them down.

Don’t bother with personal references, as it’s highly unlikely you’ll get objective feedback from a candidate’s friends or family. If they’ve had no previous paid employment, talk to someone who has worked with them on a volunteer or extracurricular basis.

If you have any doubts as to whether a referee is genuine, always ring back the organisation’s main number to check their identity.

Please note, you should always have your candidate’s permission to contact referees. Many jobseekers will prefer you not to contact their referees until an offer is made and accepted, especially if they are a current employer. If you have a signed statement of permission from a candidate, it may be worth attaching this to any initial email making contact with a referee to reassure them.

What should you ask?

Essential questions for basic written references include:

• Dates of employment
• Job title and main responsibilities
• Attendance record and number of days sick leave taken
• If they were reliable, honest, hardworking etc
• Any disciplinary actions taken against them
• If there are any reasons why they should not be employed

 Questions for more detailed telephone interviews include:

• What were the main responsibilities of the candidate in their last role?
• What are the candidate’s greatest strengths?
• Do you think the candidate is qualified for this new role?
• What specific qualities does the candidate have that will help them fulfil these responsibilities?
• What kind of management style did the candidate respond best to?
• What sort of office environment did the candidate work best in?
• How well did the candidate handle a specific skill or situation?
• What was the candidate’s reason for leaving?
• Would you rehire this candidate?

Always make sure questions are as open-ended as possible, not ones that solicit simple yes or no answers, and let the referee do most of the talking. Don’t ask leading questions – let the referee supply the information instead, eg instead of “John Smith has told us that one of his key responsibilities was x – is that correct?” ask “What were some of John Smith’s key responsibilities?”.

Don’t ask questions that are designed to solicit negative comments, eg “What are this candidate’s weaknesses?”. Most referees will feel uncomfortable giving bad feedback on a previous employee, and are likely to clam up altogether. Instead, you need to coax information out of them and intuit negative feedback from what is NOT said.

Don’t ask questions which are too general or open to interpretation, eg “What is your impression of this candidate’s character?”. It’s best to stick to the skills involved in the candidate’s old and new positions. Make sure you probe sufficiently into their responsibilities – previous volunteers can be particularly prone to over-inflating their duties.

Don’t forget to check unpaid staff

Reference checks are also an excellent idea for potential volunteers or trustees, particularly if they will be coming into direct contact with your supporters. The Charity Commission estimates that only 23% of charities carry out checks on prospective trustees.

With these unpaid staff, it is even more important to make sure the candidate is comfortable with the nature and timing of reference requests before you contact referees.

Some things to remember…

Stay legal when requesting references. Thomas Mansfield have produced some legal guidelines to conducting reference and other background checks.

Be consistent when comparing candidates. It’s best to prepare your questions in advance and keep detailed notes of the answers so you don’t stray into unconscious bias.

While TPP only supply reference checks as standard for our temporary candidates, all our candidates are interviewed face-to-face before we send over their details, enabling us to pick up any inconsistencies or cultural mismatches prior to shortlisting and allowing us to supply a consistently high quality of employees.

Further resources

100 sample questions for job reference checks

Template for a letter granting permission for reference checks

Background checking services:

Experian

NorthgateArinso

17 ideas for measuring employee effectiveness

Measuring your employees’ effectiveness is an important part of managing a team, and ensures your organisation is running at its most productive. Some roles are easier than others to evaluate, eg fundraising roles usually have quantifiable targets to hit and the effectiveness of these employees is purely based on performance against these goals. However, it can be much harder and more subjective to evaluate the performance of other employees, eg support staff. Below is a list of different metrics that you could use to evaluate employee effectiveness during appraisals.

When deciding which metrics to use, it’s worth bearing a couple of things in mind. Firstly, ask your employees how they measure their performance. They have the best knowledge about their role and what success looks like, and allowing them input into the metric used gives them ownership of the measurement process. Try to use a combination of objective (measurable numbers) and subjective (rating by a manager) measurements, and make sure you cover the whole of their role, to give you the full picture of how they are performing.

1. Management by objectives

This is probably the most common way to measure employee performance. Objectives are set periodically, eg each quarter, and reviewed at the end of the target period. Progress towards each objective is then scored and new goals set.

2. Use rating scales

For subjective measurements, such as cooperativeness, dependability and judgment, a manager can rate their employee on a scale of 1 to 10. The rating should be done at regular intervals and be consistent in both what it measures and the scale used, to track changes in staff performance. Use the job description to set criteria necessary for the role.

3. Focus on performance

To keep employees focussed solely on tasks which are critical for the success of the organisation, you can look at how much time they spend on other things, eg how often are they online or checking emails? How much time do they spend on admin? Do they often take personal calls at work? This can help identify more efficient ways of working. It is also interesting to look at productivity statistics at various times during the day, to see if there are any times where employees typically ‘slump’.

4. Ask staff to rate their own job satisfaction

Happier employees are usually more productive employees, and job satisfaction is a particularly important motivator for charity staff. This is also a very useful indicator about whether employees are likely to leave in the near future.

5. Track digital trails

Computer software increasingly allows managers to track their employees’ work, eg through keystrokes made, tasks completed or percentage of an employees’ time spent using a particular application. These metrics are especially useful for data entry or processing roles.

6. Team performance

Measuring the performance of a team as a whole, as well as the individuals within it, will help determine whether they work well together, and if a reorganisation may help boost productivity.

7. Peer appraisals

Other staff members in similar roles can be asked to rate an employee’s performance, on the basis that they know best what the job requires. This is also a good way to monitor an employee’s ability to work well with others.

8. External evaluators

The use of professional assessors who monitor employees during simulated or actual work activities gives truly objective results, but is probably not a realistic option for most not for profit organisations.

9. Quantity and quality

It is important to always make sure these measures are linked. For example, scoring call centre staff purely on number of calls fielded ignores whether the majority of these calls have a satisfactory outcome or not.

10. Cost effectiveness

If the employee has some control over their budget, this can be a useful indicator of performance.

11. Absenteeism / tardiness

Obviously, an employee is not performing when they are not at work. However, you must be careful not to discriminate in cases of absence due to sickness.

12. Creativity
This is difficult to measure but can be an incredibly important part of some roles, eg design or marketing and communications jobs. Ask an employee to keep a record of their creative work and use appraisals to go through examples and score them.

13. Feedback forms

Whenever employees have contact with either donors or service users, you can use feedback forms to track the success of the interaction and grade the staff member on their performance. Limit feedback forms to a couple of easily answered questions and you should get a sufficient flow of replies to establish a track record.

14. Mystery shopping

For staff who regularly interact with the public, eg supporter services, mystery shopping is a good way to track intangibles like knowledge, friendliness or helpfulness. Someone pretends to be a service user and uses a pre-prepared script to gauge the employee’s ability to deal with a certain situation.

15. Advocacy

Staff advocacy is particularly important for not for profit organisations, as it is important for employees to feel enthusiastic about their organisation’s cause. However, it can be difficult to measure. You could look at using net promoter scores for employees, based on their willingness to promote your organisation’s services or internal jobs.

16. Personal appearance/grooming

The key thing to measure here is appropriateness. Different roles will require different levels of personal appearance, depending on who the employee is in contact with, but it is important that employees know the standard that they are expected to adhere to.

17. Physical fitness

An increasing number of organisations are investing in their employees health and physical fitness, for instance with regular exercise classes. The idea is that healthier employees are more productive employees, and improvements in fitness can be tracked to correlate against increased productivity. However, this works best when employees are asked to track their progress themselves, as an employer doing so would be too intrusive.


Remember, it is never enough simply to measure the effectiveness of your employees. The key thing is to act on that information, so that the performance of your organisation as a whole improves.

Five ‘hidden’ employer benefits of flexible working

Recent research from TPP has shown just how valuable offering flexible working can be for non-profit organisations, and the positive effects it brings to productivity, morale, recruitment and retention have been well-documented. However, some organisations are still reluctant to introduce flexible working practices or extend them more widely throughout their staff.

There are benefits that flexible working brings that are less obvious than those mentioned above, but should still be taken into account when considering whether to introduce or extend your flexible working scheme.

Improved diversity

Offering flexible working is one of the key ways in which organisations can build a more diverse workforce. Employees with different lifestyles, family responsibilities or long-term health conditions usually find it difficult to manage a 9-5 office-based job, and flexible working is vital for them.

Diverse workforces have a broader mix of skills, knowledge and experience, giving an organisation more creativity and flexibility to overcome challenges. It has also been proven that increasing diversity leads to better staff retention.

Find out more about improving diversity

Support for local communities

In recent years there has been a growing trend within charities to decentralise resources, as charities increasingly try to keep close to the local communities in which they work. Local communities also play an important part in fundraising.

International development organisations have been at the forefront of this trend, as their service users are in a different country, and often in a different time zone, and on the ground employees can be much more effective.

Some of the larger UK-based charities have set up regional units in satellite offices to encourage localism, but for smaller charities this is not always possible. However, recruiting staff from the local community and encouraging them to work from home wherever possible can help a charity to keep in touch with its service users. It can also benefit the local community as staff spend more of their salary in that area.

Environmental impact

Most charities, whether it is part of their mission or not, tend to act in an ethical manner regarding the environment wherever possible.

According to the Office of National Statistics, the typical carbon footprint of an officer worker is 1.5 tonnes of CO2 per year, compared to the 865 kg footprint of a home worker. That’s a 42% saving, roughly the equivalent of 100 loads of laundry.

Even if it’s not possible to offer full-time remote working, encouraging employees to work some of the time from home and use web- or telephone-conferencing rather than travelling to meetings can all help reduce their carbon footprint.

Cost savings

The average office cost per employee in the UK is £6k per year. That’s a huge amount of money considering the average UK office is only at 45% occupancy over the working day.

In the current economic climate, when charities are being forced to explore ways of cutting costs without affecting their services, this is really a factor you cannot afford to ignore.

Staggered home working, combined with hotdesking, can really improve the efficiency of your office and help bring down overhead costs.

Skills sharing and upskilling

Having staff members who are regularly out of the office can have a positive effect on the team as a whole. Responsibilities and the skill sets they require are more likely to be shared across the team, and the likelihood of skills silos decreased.

This gives employers the opportunity to take over tasks they might not normally handle, allowing them to grow their skills and giving them a more varied work life, which can help boost morale. Spreading skills and knowledge across a team also helps to ensure that productivity does not drop in periods of staff turnover.

However, to really foster a spirit of cooperation in an office, it is important that all employees are given equal opportunities for flexible working. Allowing some staff to work remotely but giving others no flexible options can create resentment and will make it much harder to create an environment in which workers are willing to share their knowledge and skills.

Now is the time

At a recent conference, Transport Minister Norman Baker, encouraged organisations to use the London 2012 Olympic Games as an opportunity to test different flexible working strategies that allow staff to work from home or from offices closer to where they live.

The Family and Parenting Institute expect the Olympics to be a “watershed moment” that embeds widespread flexible working practices in the UK, as organisations create opportunities for flexible working, see the added value it brings, and implement these schemes on a more permanent basis.

Business Secretary Vince Cable has said that flexible working is essential for future growth in the UK, so why not embrace the challenges of the Olympics as an opportunity to harness the full value of flexible working for your organisation?


More information

For more help with flexible working strategies, see:

TPP Blog - Part time workers can add value to your organisation

TPP Blog - 5 ways to engage remote workers

Civil Society Finance - Flexible working: the new normal

HR Zone - Four managerial traits to ensure flexible working works

Small Business Blog - Five Ways Flexible Working Can Boost Productivity

How many candidates should you interview?

Have you ever spent days interviewing jobseekers for a role, only to find you don’t have anyone who really fits the job description or that you can’t agree on a favourite candidate? In this blog post, TPP looks at the pitfalls of interviewing too many (or too few) candidates and how you can get to the perfect ratio.

Why not interview everyone who’s suitable for the role?

Some organisations take the view that you should interview everyone who may be suitable for the role, so that you can compare different skill sets to find the best possible candidate. While this is a good idea in theory, in practice it creates a lot of problems for the interviewers.

First and foremost, interviewing a lot of candidates takes a huge amount of time, both in the interviews and in pre- and post-interview discussions. Having many different possibilities also means that everyone involved in the process could have a different favourite candidate, who supports their own aims or ideals, making it difficult to come to a consensus.

Lots of interviewees also create more administration. It’s important to keep in touch with your candidates and give them feedback, to manage their expectations and ensure they have a good recruitment experience that doesn’t damage your employer brand. This adds even more to your workload and eats up time.

All this prolongs the decision-making period when recruiting for a new role. Even though there are lots of jobseekers in the market at the moment, top-notch candidates still tend to get snapped up swiftly. Delay the recruitment process and you risk losing your best candidates to another organisation.

Interviewing too few candidates is also a problem, as you many not be able to fill the role, and if you do you may feel you have had to settle for a less than ideal candidate.

So what is the right number of candidates to interview?

Obviously, there is no magic formula to find the right number of interviewees. Some roles attract a wider pool of applicants, giving you a huge pool of candidates to choose from, while others may only have a couple of potential interviewees.

In TPP’s experience, admin or communications roles tend to attract huge numbers of applicants, while harder to fill roles in fundraising or at the senior end usually only result in a few candidates. But huge responses do not mean you have to interview hundreds of candidates.

As a general guideline, we suggest you meet with 3-5 candidates in the first round of interviews, and 2-3 in the second. If you are interviewing more than these, it may mean that you are not qualifying your candidates sufficiently prior to the interview. Spending some extra time in putting together a job description and person specification can save you hours spent debating the merits of different candidates later on.

How do I narrow down the list?

First of all, you shouldn’t be interviewing people with different skill sets. When putting together a job description, you should create lists of essential and desirable competencies. Also decide on the level of training you are willing to provide. Anyone who does not have all of the essential competencies can be discarded and the remainders ranked by the number of desirable skills they possess. The interview can then be used to judge cultural fit and personality instead of skills.

You can further narrow down your list of potential candidates using pre-screening techniques, such as aptitude tests and personality profiles. You can also check references and qualifications and make CRB checks if required to rule out candidates before you invest time in interviewing them.

A common reason for organisations to interview too many candidates is that they are trying to duplicate their existing star performers. This can waste far too much time and rule out candidates who many perform just as well, but in a different way. A mixture of personalities tends to work best in most organisations, as it aids idea generation and innovation.

Any potential deal breakers, like salary expectations, should be brought up in advance, not at the end of the interview; a very common interview mistake.

If you are using a recruitment agency to preselect candidates for you, make sure you give them all the available information and that they truly understand your needs. TPP always take the time to make sure we fully recognise your requirements, however urgent the role, and present you with only those candidates we are confident fully meet the brief. At TPP, the offer management process starts as soon as we meet with a potential candidate, so there will never be any nasty surprises when you’re ready to make them an offer.

Things to remember

You only actually NEED to interview one person and if the first person you see is perfect for the role, you can offer it to them straight away. Recruiters often simply don't believe their luck, and continue to interview more candidates just to compare or see who else is out there. This risks losing the original interviewee, as a candidate who is that good for you is likely to be highly viable for other roles and greatly in demand. If the candidate truly meets all your requirements, and is a good personality fit, strike while the iron is hot or you risk losing them.

If your first round of interviews fails to come up with any suitable candidates, there may be a problem with your job description. Limiting the number of applicants you see gives you a chance to fix the problems before launching on a second round, and means there are still potential candidates out there to interview.

If you are in any doubt about the ideal number of candidates to interview, your TPP consultant will be able to advise you. Plus, all of the candidates we suggest to you are pre-screened in face-to-face meetings, so we can be confident they will be a good fit for your organisation both in terms of competencies and personality.

Further resources

8 ways to effectively shortlist candidates
How many people should you call in for a first in person interview
The guerilla guide to interviewing
How many candidates should I interview